MEDIA: ADVERTISING; Saturn Goes Back to Warm and Fuzzy

By STUART ELLIOTT

Published: March 9, 2007

GENERAL MOTORS is borrowing a tradition from an unlikely source -- the National Hockey League -- to help recreate the warm and fuzzy feelings consumers had for its Saturn division more than a decade ago.

Saturn is inviting owners of its new Aura midsize sedan to ''share'' the North American Car of the Year award it won in January at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. G.M. bought from Tiffany five replicas of the five-pound leaded-crystal trophy, and is inviting people who purchased Auras before it won the honor to borrow an award for a day or two.

The owner then returns the trophy to General Motors, which sends it out to another owner. (G.M. pays for the shipping, about $30 each way, using FedEx.)

Some owners, like Bob Sim in Hollywood, Fla., who bought a pewter bronze Aura XR, get to keep the trophy over a weekend.

''I had several neighbors who came over and asked, 'Well, how did you get that?' '' Mr. Sim, who operates the Robert W. Sim accounting firm, said in a telephone interview. ''And I got a couple of pictures.''

''It made me kind of nostalgic,'' said Mr. Sim, who is 62. ''When I got out of the Army, the first car I bought was a 1967 Mercury Cougar that won a car of the year award.'' He was right; the Cougar received the award from Motor Trend magazine.

It is just such emotions that executives at Saturn hope to evoke with the promotion, which is reminiscent of how the members of the team that wins the N.H.L. championship each season share the Stanley Cup.

The promotion is featured on the Saturn Web site (saturn.com), where 15 Aura owners offer testimonials in video clips. The promotion is also described in an offbeat television commercial created by the new Saturn agency, Deutsch. The spot began running during the Academy Awards broadcast on Feb. 25.

''Not long after the Saturn Aura won the award,'' an announcer says in the spot, ''we decided to give it back'' to the owners ''who chose the Aura before it won.''

The goal is to create a contemporary version of the image that Saturn enjoyed in its heyday in the early and mid-1990s. A campaign from the first Saturn agency, Hal Riney & Partners in San Francisco, helped earn the brand a reputation for being customer-friendly, reliable and a quirky.

The Riney campaign carried the theme ''A different kind of company. A different kind of car.'' The ads celebrated G.M.'s decision to sell a domestically produced car intended to compete against imports like Honda and Toyota with policies that included no-haggle pricing and free doughnuts at dealer showrooms.

Saturn was once renowned ''as the consumer's automobile, with everything direct and honest, no frills,'' said Robert K. Passikoff, president at Brand Keys, a brand- and customer-loyalty research company.

But after years of less distinct, prosaic advertising, Saturn has become ''the ubiquitous automobile that people know but have forgotten what they know it for,'' he said.

Mr. Passikoff said he watched the new commercial during the Oscars and ''thought to myself, 'That was so smart.' ''

''They are really going back to their roots,'' he said. ''It resonates with the values that used to be Saturn's.''

That assessment, needless to say, would please Saturn executives.

''We thought it was time to reacquaint people with the Saturn brand essence and rekindle that love affair people had with the brand,'' said David Koziara, advertising manager for Saturn in Detroit.

The decision came after more than a year of running ads that focused on telling consumers that, after long stinting on new models, Saturn was finally bringing out products like the Aura sedan, a crossover called Outlook, a convertible named Sky and a redesigned Vue sport utility.

The hope was to offer ''a more contemporary expression'' of the Saturn persona of the '90s, Mr. Koziara said, ''and put a fresh face on what human, personal, thoughtful and customer-centric mean today'' -- all in a manner that would be ''very Saturn-like, not boastful.''

After Aura won the award, Saturn executives asked their creative agency, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco, part of the Omnicom Group, for a campaign to promote it. The agency has produced ads for Saturn since winning the assignment in 2002 from the original Saturn agency, Riney, now known as Publicis & Hal Riney, part of the Publicis Groupe.

But the Saturn executives did not like the ideas from Goodby, Silverstein and asked Deutsch, another G.M. agency, to lend a hand; creative employees there came up with the concept of sharing the award.

'' 'Stanley Cup' was what we called it internally,'' said Eric Hirshberg, co-president and chief creative officer at Deutsch L.A., which is the Marina del Rey, Calif., office of Deutsch, part of the Interpublic Group.

''There's something inherently chest-beating and self-congratulatory about promoting an award you've won,'' Mr. Hirshberg said. ''But saying the award doesn't go into a trophy case, but to those who contributed to winning it, will help Saturn get back that sense of community, that sense of connection, the brand had.''

The Saturn executives liked the award idea so much that they dismissed Goodby, Silverstein and named Deutsch L.A. as the creative agency of record for ads, with spending estimated at $200 million.

The logistics of sharing the award proved somewhat challenging. What was finally worked out was to send e-mail messages inviting participation in the promotion to about 3,500 of the estimated 15,000 people who bought Auras from Aug. 1, when they were introduced, to Jan. 7, when the award was presented.

So far, Deutsch L.A. said, about 350 owners are taking part. Mr. Koziara said the promotion would continue ''for at least several months.''

The TV commercial is meant to represent the promotion rather than document it. For instance, it appears to show owners sending the award to each other, rather than G.M. sending them. And the packages in the spot bear the Postal Service logo, not FedEx markings.

One aspect of the commercial does seem faithful to reality: the trophy comes carefully packed.

When Mr. Sim opened the box he received on March 1, he found the trophy ''wrapped in tissue and then bubble wrap, several different ways, in two boxes.''

In rewrapping the trophy before he went to FedEx on Monday to ship it back, he added, ''I tried to remember exactly how it was done.''

Photo: A scene from Saturn's campaign, which focuses on the rewards of ownership, including a chance to keep a replica of a trophy for a day or two.